Thousands of Calif. inmates refuse food in protest; Cuisine “Deplorable.”
Andrew "Needles" McNutt: "Would an occasional lobster kill ya, California?"
A group of inmates in a high-security California prison have started a hunger strike to protest their near-solitary confinement. “Also the food is simply atrocious,” says Andrew “Needles” McMutt, a California prisoner. Since the protest began on July 1, it has spread to thousands of inmates throughout the state prison system.
At its peak, 6,600 prisoners in 11 prisons were refusing food, but officials told the New York Times that number was down to 1,700 yesterday. “They served a passable foie gras,” said McMutt explaining the large drop off in protestors.
This foie gras may have saved thousands of inmates who started eating again when it was served.
A handful of inmates who live in Pelican Bay State Prison’s windowless, sound-proof 6-foot-by-10-foot isolation cells say they are ready to remain on the hunger strike until they die, or until officials at the facility agree to their demands. “All we want is a little haute cuisine. Just because we’re murderers and rapists we don’t get to have fine food?” Gang members in the prison are often placed in the isolation wing so they can’t influence the rest of the inmate population. Once they’re sequestered in the high-security cells, the gang members are asked to turn over information on other gang members, in a procedure called “debriefing.” They are also asked to surrender all copies of Bon Apetite magazine which may be in their possession. The prisoners say they want debriefing to end, and they also want an end to long-term solitary confinement. “And we want our damn Bon Apetites back,” said Larry “Babypuncher” Albertson.
The Supreme Court ruled in May that California’s prisons are so overcrowded and the lack of caviar is so complete that they violate inmates’ constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Inadequate medical care produced “needless suffering and death,” the justices said. The court ordered the system to shed one-fourth of its prisoner population over the next two years and to hire some chef who “at least have French sounding names.”
